u/GreenTeachy

99.999 - BwueCoats
99.998- Blue Devils
99.997 - Santa Clara Vanguard
99.995 - Boston
99.994 - Carolina Crown

The following post is earnest, and not meant as satire. I've been banned from every platform except this one. My intent is to raise awareness in marching members of what they are not being taught-- principles of show design found in all professional performing arts. Know your show. Know why you're paying your designers $80,000, and whether they're following common sense principles of production design, from music videos to opera.

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Phantom's 2026 show *Bloodline* is touted as an illustration of fighting for supremacy to maintain one's identity and legacy in history. That's either an amateurish attempt at a corps anniversary theme, or a defense of racial dominance.

Gulp.

Considering our country's current state of racism, a headline-driven expulsion of Hispanics, and an administration with ties to Naziism, a show theme that alludes to dominant hereditary genes could not be more tone deaf. The fumbling Phantom design team has blundered again. Any respectable advertising agency, any corporation, any human rights organization celebrating an anniversary, any media outlet, any educational entity, any arts festival with an anniversary, any museum, any government entity would steer clear of any mention of genetic dominance. It's so amateurish and blundering, it's cringe-worthy.

If a designer wanted to do an anniversary show, you'd probably be better off by sticking with "The Calling" (sci-fi adventure recruitment theme) or "On the Shoulders of Giants" (whole corps on stilts), or get the rights to the title "The Ring Cycle", a play on Phantom's seeking and winning championship rings.

But to place lancets on the field, as if it is a literal blood test, a genetic test, shifts the focus from the muse-influenced calling of drum corps participants, and instead focuses on the ugly subject of genetic testing and racial dominance. Worse, the show makes no use of the lancets. No blood is drawn. The lancets simply roam, shift location, and end up creating a strange formal facade, as if from a castle at Mar-a-lago, or the grandiloquent border decoration on the new Trump currency. The gloomy premise of genetic dominance smacks of white nationalism.

Clumsy theme aside, nothing happens in the show. There is no illustrated challenge to the "bloodline." There is no dramatic action. There is no risk-taking, or defense of the bloodline, or other actions mentioned in their press release. There is no pattern of action or progression of imagery. There is no real-world use of the large lancet props. They serve no thematic or practical purpose. They don't transform in any way. There's only a generalized "aggression", which will soon deflate and flounder without some additional thematic layer or dramatic action by August. This is a sixth-place, push-and-pose design with studio musician-level talent that needs additional elements in order to save it:

* \--Perhaps an ending reveal of six large scale props or flags, each representing an iconic show in the corp's history. The arrow flag from New World Symphony, the cube from Mynd, Juliet in her red dress, and the yellow Beethoven flag-- all massive and stately. Each of these revealedin succession in the finale, with the last one-- one of the lancet props turns, tilts down and hurtles toward the Spartacus Roman Senator Crassus who is stabbed by the lancet and is impaled, just like Phantom's Spartacus finale. All of these represent the defense of the storied, imagined "bloodline" of the corps.
* Or another option, blood pours out of the tips of the lancets (wide bolts of red fabric) with various salient dates imprinted on them-- dates of Phantom's wins, or Shostakovich's birthday, and the like. These dates remind us of the important milestone's in Phantom's "legacy". The dated banners help create the story of the imagined "bloodline" of the corps.

In the future, PR's scholarship-level talent will soon learn to take over the production development process in order to secure a win by developing a clear, visually engaging pattern of action, required for top placement.

Can someone please get this guy a job or something?

Hey friends!

Traveling with a music group to Mexico City and Oaxaca this summer. Very excited.

I live in LA, and Mexican culture has shaped my life and I’m so excited to see Mexico for the first time!

What are some things I should know?

I don’t really drink. I won’t be at a resort, but I also won’t be alone, I’ll be with a large group. I’m not loud, I don’t make myself a target.

Heck, I’m used to walking through LA.

What do I need to know!

Hey yall!

Big flashback from my childhood in Cincinnati.

I remember there being an ATM or bank in Cincinnati called Jenny… I think.

The logo was like a queen playing card?

I can’t remember! Anyone else remember this?

In the original game, there were a lot of unanswered questions. A lot of space in between explanations to build your own headcanon. While this was nice at the time, I love how the space drama is fully fleshed out here.

Andross isn't just a mad scientist who makes bioweapons. He finds planets like Aquas with huge sealife to turn the creatures into weapons. In fact, Andross isn't just a huge head with a telepathic floating brain. He turned his own brain into a bioweapon. A combination of machine and organic parts.

Sector X doesn't happen to have a warp zone, but Andross actually constructed an artificial warp zone in this base to sneak across the system.

You see this with Gorgon and his brain teleporting, using that dimensional displacement travel.

My favorite instance of this is during sector Y when Andross' fleet isn't just there... It is materializing into existence from across the system by messing with space-time.

So cool! Also the mention that Andross wasn't just banished to Venom. He was actually sentenced to death, but Pepper decided to banish him instead. Crazy.

Hey y'all.

I'm old.

Growing up, I had a SNES, N64, Gamecube, and then Xbox 360 through college.

For me, my golden age of gaming was in college. Playing Halo 3, Black Ops 2, Mass Effect, Bioshock, etc., in the dorms was incredible.

However, after college, I stopped playing games.

I'm just not into modern gaming. The eSports, the streaming, the loot box-filled games.

Not for me.

I realize that is just the world, it moved on, and it's just not my thing anymore.

However, the Xbox Ally is changing that.

Playing Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Far Cry, Fallout, all of these games I loved when growing up on the go, is amazing.

What I am really loving about this system is the emulation.

This device runs the Dolphin emulator SO well.

So many times, new devices don't emulate well. They are fighting with the emulator, they are running at odd framerates, etc., not to mention that using an external controller almost never works well.

There is always some sort of odd input delay.

But with the ROG Xbox Ally, I am running my favorite GameCube games without adjusting any settings, and the controller buttons work perfectly after mapping them.

I feel like a kid again! This thing is amazing.

Hey friends.

Flying to Kyoto on Monday on United Flight 35 from SFO to KIX.

I’m not afraid of the flight itself. I know the flight will land safely. I have full confidence in the flight crew.

I fly often, and push through my fear because I need to fly for work.

However, I keep looking at the 12 hour flight time.

When I’m going throughout the day, I can’t imagine 12 whole hours just… sitting there… over the ocean…

Ugh. It feels so claustrophobic and isolating at the same time…

At least over land there are thousands of flights. You don’t feel alone. But on a lot of trans pacific flights, you are locked into your track buddies and that’s it…

Just feels so isolated…

My other fear is jet lag.

I got really sick when I traveled to Europe over the Atlantic. I couldn’t sleep on the plane and ended up with flu-like jet lag. It was awful.

I just need a virtual hug.

I’m not scared for my safety.

I’m scared of my sanity… so much time in the tube up there…

I was skeptical.

I was a long time console gamer, not big into handhelds at all. I tried a Steamdeck and some micro PC devices in the past, and was never super impressed.

I just brought home my ROG Xbox Ally, i cringed at the price, but i have a 14 hour flight coming up and i need something more than movies.

This is my first night with it and im blown away.

It plays everything.

It plays it all so well.

For those of you who are on the fence, let me clear things up.

This isn’t a handheld Xbox. It’s better.

It plays literally EVERYTHING. And unlike Xbox consoles, you aren’t stuck on one storefront.

The console boots up in Xbox full screen mode. You have all your Achievements and friends right there.

The Xbox Ally plays PC Xbox games. Which, honestly, is just about everything. And yes, achievements are there.

If you want to play the console version of a game, let’s say, Far Cry 5, you can stream it through the Microsoft servers.

Or, again, you can just download the PC version from gamepass.

Do you own some games on Steam? Like Bioshock, even things like Black Ops 2?

You can launch it through the Xbox app.

Insane!

Alright Nintendo you win!

I’m a PC/Steamdeck guy and you win!

I’ll buy your ass $500 console that can barely play 10 year old 3rd party games, just for one game!

You got me! You win!

Hey friends.

My band has a tour coming up in Japan and Mexico.

For shows, we want to do something “American but kinda Ironic”

So I’m going to wear a Browns Jersey of a super obscure player.

Here’s who I have.

Joe Flacco
Joe Jurevicious
Ricky Dudley
Steve Heiden
Charlie Frye
Ty Detmer

I know! So many good choices. Which would you go with?

Hey friends.

I have my first *actual* long flight coming up.

I fly often. Probably 2 round trips a month or so.

But they are usually 2.5 hours to 5 hours.

I’ve been over the Atlantic, flying New York to Portugal, and it was only about 6.5 hours.

Well, this week I’m flying United from SFO to NRT in Japan.

I’m not super scared. Honestly, ETOPS and flying over the Atlantic really got rid of my fears about being over the water.

My issue is the intimidating time in flight.

10-11 hours is expected, and that just feels so long to me.

It’s crazy because I’ve definitely been in flights for 10 hours before in a day, it was just broken into layovers. So I know I can do it. It’s doable 100%

But whew. How do you get over that intimidating flight time?